School Leadership from a to Z by Ramsey Robert D.;

Author:Ramsey, Robert D.; [Ramsey, Robert D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1994881
Publisher: Corwin Press
Published: 2003-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

N Networking and Nit-Picking

The employer usually gets the employees he deserves.

—Sir Walter Bilbey

Without bright, bold employees an organization quickly becomes tomorrow’s road kill.

—Harris and Brannick

Finding and Keeping Great Employees

A mentor can tell you things you didn’t learn in school.

—Sheila Wellington

businesswoman

Fussbudgets make lousy leaders. Authentic leaders don’t have time to nitpick over trivial, petty, insignificant, or irrelevant details. They’re too busy and have more important things to do. So they usually just follow acclaimed author Richard Carlson’s highly publicized advice: “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

But there is one thing that successful leaders in all fields are universally picky, choosy, and fussy about: people—the people with whom they associate, the people they hire, and the people they choose as mentors and as part of their professional support network.

Leadership is all about people. Leaders don’t lead technology or machines or money. They lead people. That’s why good leaders surround themselves with good people—often people who are better than they are.

As a principal or superintendent you can be only as successful as the people around you, who work for and with you every day. One of the great cautions every leader who lasts pays attention to is this: Be very picky about the people you hang out with, the people you hire, the people you keep, and the people you pattern your career after. Are you paying attention? (“People are not your greatest asset. The right people are.”—Jim Carlson)

It starts with the people you spend time with, on and off the job. Believe it or not, a great deal of your success depends on the company you keep. Winners spend time with winners. You can’t learn excellence rubbing elbows with mediocrity.

Look around at how your heroes in the profession spend their time. They spend most of it with their best people, because talent expands when you invest time in it.

Conversely, your role models don’t spend much time on ROAD Warriors (a military term for slackers who are “Retired on Active Duty”) or too much time working on the weaknesses of weak performers. Neither should you.

The only people in any organization who are ever going to become truly outstanding at what they do are already damned good at it to start with. Working with them is the best use of a leader’s time. Healthy organizations are built on strong bonds between good leaders and their best employees.

Some school administrators you know devote too much of their time to working with their weakest staff members in hopes of salvaging them or of engineering a metamorphosis from tailender to top performer. It doesn’t work.

Miracles happen. But not often in your lifetime. It’s rare that a leader can profoundly alter the basic nature of another adult.

In most situations, you have to work with what’s there. If there isn’t much there to start with, don’t work at it very hard. (“Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in. This is hard enough.”—Marc Buckingham)

To make matters worse, while leaders

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